Cherchell is a coastal city of central Algeria, ninety kilometres west of Algiers and adjacent to Tipaza. The Berber-Punic foundation Iol — attested in Numidian-Punic inscriptions of the third century BCE — was elevated under Juba II to royal capital status as Caesarea Mauretaniae and developed across the early Imperial period into one of the principal Roman cities of north-central Africa.
Juba II made Caesarea his principal residence from approximately 25 BCE, reflecting the strategic and commercial advantages of a coastal capital over the inland alternatives at Iol's predecessor Berber centres. Under his patronage and that of his wife Cleopatra Selene II — daughter of Cleopatra VII and Mark Antony — the city absorbed substantial Hellenistic-Egyptian sculptural, architectural, and intellectual patronage; the museum at Cherchell holds one of the principal Hellenistic-style sculptural collections in north Africa, including portrait busts of Juba II, Cleopatra Selene, and their immediate court.
The post-Mauretanian Roman city continued as the capital of the imperial province of Mauretania Caesariensis after the assassination of Juba's son Ptolemy in 40 CE and the annexation of the kingdom. The Roman urban plan — the Severan period forum, the public baths, the circus, the theatre — is partially preserved beneath and alongside the modern town, with substantial remains visible at the museum and at the open-air sites scattered through the contemporary urban fabric.
The medieval and early modern town declined sharply after the Arab conquest and the disruption of the Mediterranean coastal economy of late antiquity. Modern Cherchell is a small coastal town set against an unusually dense Roman archaeological background; the Cherchell Museum, founded in 1908, remains one of the principal regional collections of Mauretanian-period material in Algeria.